Manufacturing has changed and so have the needs of manufacturing employers. They’re looking for highly skilled professionals with capacity for learning, creative confidence, comfort with collaboration, and of course the technical and constructive skills necessary to design, build, test, and make real things that make a difference in the real world. It’s a complex situation, but it points to a bright future for makers who want to make a career in manufacturing. Throughout the Pittsburgh region, employers and workforce development agencies are helping them do it.

Making solutions: Fluid Power Challenge is an annual engineering design competition that challenges student teams to apply STEM principles and maker skills to build a machine that completes a task using only hydraulic power

Making it competitive: Bots IQ is an educational robotics competition for high school age students in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Working together in teams, students design, build, and test competitive robots.

The maker industrial revolution: Made Right Here is an innovative workforce development initiative that recruits makers from the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed, trains them up in contemporary production technologies, and connects them with local businesses in need of skilled manufacturing employees.